The legal regulation of the public sector auditing among the Supreme Audit Institutions (SAI) of the Northern and Central-European countries holds the potential to offer new perspectives on the functioning and independence of these public audit institutions. This paper aims to examine the external audit practice among the Baltic Sea Region countries as it is defined in the laws and legal acts aimed at the functioning of the particular institution. The task was carried out by conducting an analysis of the legal regulation of the corresponding supreme audit institutions. Overall, SAIs in the Baltic Sea Region closely cooperate with the Parliaments in the reporting phase. Meanwhile, most of them are closely integrated with the legislative power during the phase of the appointment of the head of the audit institution as well as during the budgeting phase and later on during the reporting phase. The research shows that among the Baltic Sea Region countries the Supreme Audit Institutions pursue audits in diverse range of fields as stipulated in the legal regulations. The paper also indicates a space for further research in the field of the SAI legal regulation, audit merit and further interrelation with the executive and legislative powers as well as the impact of such cooperation on the functioning of the accountability system in the particular country.
Baltic States and Finland are vibrant regions with similar sized population and historical experience. Their adaptation to the new digital era is undermined by lack of professionals. Across the EU a major reason for labour shortage in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields professionals lies in the insufficient supply of higher education graduates due to stagnant enrolment rates in STEM fields. The aim of this research addresses the existing trends in tertiary STEM education in Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. This includes the tasks of analysing the quantitative trends (enrolment and graduation) in the HEIs of Baltics and Finland over the period from 2013 to 2017 as well as analysing the structural changes taking place in the respective higher education systems from 2013 to 2018. The Baltic States combined have numerical advantages in terms of young people, and young professionals (25-34 year olds) with tertiary education. However, in terms of the number of students and graduates Finland is at the forefront. The largest proportion of students enrolling in STEM fields lie within Finland (33.9%) whereas the smallest one is in Latvia (24.0%). Finland is also a leader in the share and total number of information and communication technology (ICT) graduates. In the period 2013-2017 Latvia's results improved in two (5 th and 6 th) of the STEM study fields, Lithuania made a remarkable result in one STEM (6 th) field by 46.9%, Estonia saw a relative increase in the 5 th and 6 th study field while Finland experienced a numerical decrease in all three STEM fields.
The aim of the regional development is to promote and ensure balanced and sustainable development of the state. One of the approaches for ensuring equal development is related to the opportunities for acquiring tertiary education. The lack of diverse study programmes may cause risk of "brain drain" in-between the regions, as well as it may question the future sustainability of certain regions, thus causing negative long-term consequences for the regional development. Equal accessibility to higher education in the regions is an important preconditions for a balanced development of national economy. The analysis of data on the higher education institution enrolment, graduation and state funded study opportunities are analysed in order to determine the existing regional disparities between the statistical regions of Latvia and the higher education institutions (HEIs) within. The presented data show great disparities in terms of equal availability of graduates of certain fields of study among regions of which Vidzeme region stands out the with highest level of specialization among all RHEIs. The novelty of this study lies in the use of a study thematic fields based approach, thus further indicating the skills based disparities among the regions.
Peatlands have a vital role in carbon sequestration and mitigation of global climate change. Peatlands in the boreal and sub-arctic regions store around 15-30% of global soil carbon. In the European Union the move towards the climate neutrality policy includes activities specifically aimed at the reduction of negative greenhouse gas emissions from peatlands through nature conservation and renewal. In Latvia the total area of peatlands is 645 100 ha. Due to industrial peat extraction and other processes a considerable proportion of peatlands in Latvia are degraded, thus leaving negative impact on both the local wildlife environment and on the global effort to tame the climate change. Areas in Latvia where peat extraction has ended or has been suspended without revitalisation activities in place amount to 18 010 ha. Given the conditions the restoration of degraded peatland environments is important and most often take place in the raised bogs calling for evidence-based decision making through deployment of hydrological models that are applicable for restoration of raised bogs in conditions of Latvia. The analysis of available hydrological models indicate that mathematical deterministic physically based models are applicable for the restoration activities of peatlands. The raised bog model deployed in Männikjärve bog holds the potential to be integrated within a virtual reality environment after further improvements, thus potentially improving decision and environmental policy making process for raised bog area restoration activities. Further work on tailored model for bog restoration considering the data acquisition challenges with input data fed through remote sensing capabilities is proposed.
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